Why am I getting trademark invoices in the mail?

Trademark applications are public records. Anyone can download applicant names, addresses, serial numbers and deadlines in bulk, which is how these solicitations are generated.

How do I know if a trademark notice is real?

Check the serial number in USPTO TSDR. It shows every genuine deadline and fee. Official email comes from uspto.gov, and official fees are paid to the USPTO directly rather than to a private company.

Do I need a US attorney to file a trademark?

If you are domiciled outside the United States, yes — a US-licensed attorney must represent you before the USPTO. US-domiciled applicants may file themselves.

Trademark Scams: How to Recognise Them

Filing a trademark puts your name, address and deadlines into a public database. Within weeks, the letters start arriving. Here is how to tell what is real.

Almost every trademark applicant receives official-looking mail asking for money. Some of it is fraud, some is legal but misleading, and a small amount is genuine. The difference matters: paying the wrong invoice wastes money, but ignoring a real deadline loses the registration.

The thirty-second check that settles almost everything

Look up your serial or registration number in USPTO TSDR. It shows every real deadline, every fee genuinely due, and every document the office has actually sent you.

If a notice refers to something TSDR does not show, it did not come from the USPTO. If TSDR does show a deadline, it is real — but pay the USPTO directly rather than whoever wrote to you.

The patterns

Fake Trademark Invoices and Official-Looking NoticesLetters and emails that look like government correspondence but are private companies asking for money. Trademark Renewal and Maintenance ScamsWhy solicitations cluster around year five, and how to tell a real deadline from an invented one. Offshore Filing Services and the US Attorney RuleWhy foreign-domiciled applicants must use a US attorney, and how some services work around it. Non-Attorneys, Filing Services and Unauthorized PracticeWhere legitimate self-filing ends and someone practising law without a licence begins. What the USPTO Will and Will Not DoA short reference for checking whether a message is genuinely from the trademark office. What To Do If You Already PaidConcrete steps if you have sent money or your filing was made by a service you no longer trust.

Four questions that catch most of them

Who gets the money? Official fees are paid to the USPTO directly, never to a company writing on its behalf.
What domain sent it? Official email comes from uspto.gov. Lookalike domains are the commonest tell.
Does TSDR agree? A deadline that does not appear against your serial number does not exist.
What are you actually buying? Publication in a private directory or an unrequested watch service has no legal effect.

Official sources

Why we do not name companies

These pages describe patterns, not businesses. Some senders of these solicitations are outright fraudulent; others are technically legal private services whose marketing is merely misleading. Telling them apart requires evidence we do not have, and calling a named company a scam is a statement of fact about an identifiable business.

Recognising the pattern protects you just as well. Where a specific operator matters, the USPTO publishes examples of misleading notices and its own sanction decisions — USPTO: Caution on misleading notices.